


Sacrifice

by a_ghostlight_for_roman



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_ghostlight_for_roman/pseuds/a_ghostlight_for_roman
Summary: After realising just how useless he is to the team, Lance begins to neglect himself, and sacrifice himself for his teammates more often.
Kudos: 18





	Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first fanfiction i wrote, which I posted 3 years ago, I think? Anyways it isn't great, but I figured I'd post it here.

Lance mostly kept to himself; It was just something that he did. Everyone else was busy with their own things, and he was busy with his. That was that. Keith was always training, or hanging out with Shiro. Pidge was working on… Whatever xe was working on; Hunk was typically in the kitchen, or totally geeking out with Pidge over whatever xe was doing, Shiro was always working on something relevant to Voltron (poor man needs some rest, Christ), and Allura was completely off-limits, too annoyed simply by Lance’s presence to even pay him any mind. Coran, however, was always willing to speak with Lance, or even just hang out with him, or work with him, or… Well, you get the point. Coran was great, and also the only person Lance was able to hang out with. So he did.

Coran would tell him stories about his life on Altea, and his family. Stories of the original paladins, and of him when he was a soldier. Lance would listen intently to these stories, soaking up every word. The older man had such interesting stories, and Lance didn’t want to miss a single word.

Lance would tell stories on occasion, as well; How he used to be convinced that he was a son of Poseidon (Lance was quite the Percy Jackson fan), the time that his big sister Anita had stolen his mother’s favorite cooking pan when she moved out and had to hide it when their mother came over, the time he and Hunk had accidentally spilled Mountain Dew all over Pidge’s laptop… The list went on and on.

Eventually, however, the stories became more personal, pretty much just becoming venting sessions; these were the stories of how Lance missed home, the moments before Coran was locked inside the cryo-pod for ten-thousand years, and all he could think of was how much he wished he could’ve saved his sons, and, most importantly, how *worthless* Lance felt.

Lance, in short, believed that he wasn’t worth much. *Knew* that he wasn’t worth much. Yes, the Blue Lion had chosen him as her paladin, but he knew that she could easily find a replacement. Hell, if the Lions could just randomly end up being found by five people accidentally traveling to space who just happened to be the perfect fit for the paladin life, Blue could easily find a new paladin to pilot her.

Upon hearing of these thoughts, Coran immediately began to reassure him that he was needed.

“Lance, my boy,” he said, concern leaking into his voice, “you are in no way useless to this team. You’re the sharpshooter! The tailor! And, most importantly,” he began wiggling his eyebrows, “you’re quite good with the ladies.” Lance chuckled at that, quickly formulating a reply. “While that last part is quite true, the rest is sugarcoating the situation, at best.” He leaned forward, arms resting on his knees and bending over slightly, head towards the ground. “I’m no tailor. All I do is drive the team apart, with me and Keith’s fighting, and my reluctance to consider boundaries. I’m more like a steamroller. You know,” he raised his arms in front of him, doing a sort of a kneading motion- “slowly destroying everyone’s hopes for the advancements of this team.”

Coran sighed, wrapping an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “As much as I’d love to make you feel better about yourself, I know anything that I say won’t do much to counteract the damage you’re doing to yourself with these self-deprecating thoughts. If you really think you’re not useful to the team, take action! Make yourself useful. In fact, I’ve got a way you could do that right now!”

Lance looked up at him, smiling softly. “What is it, Coran?”

“You can help me clean up the pods!”

And so Lance helped Coran clean the pods. He wanted to feel useful, and if he needed to clean every pod within a 10 mile radius, the he would do it, goddamnit.

He did small things like that quite often, after that. He cleaned with Coran, passed Pidge xer tools, and gathered Hunk’s ingredients, among other things. But not long after, his attempts at being useful became more extreme. He trained constantly, rarely taking breaks. He kept track of Pidge and Keith’s sleeping patterns, making sure they went to sleep at a decent hour. He cleaned the entire castle, if he could find the time. Even this became worse over time, however. It became more of a “stop being such a waste of space” thing, instead of a “try to get better at what you do” thing. He stopped feeding himself as often, so as not to waste the food. He stopped speaking unless he needed to, so as not to waste anyone’s time. He stopped asking for help with injuries, so as not to waste any resources.

He started taking hits for his teammates.

He already felt like death. He *looked* like death. You could see his ribs, his spine and just about every other bone in his body. He could barely go to sleep anymore, stress dreams plaguing his sleep. Talking was too stressful for his vocal cords, so he just took whatever punishment Shiro and Allura gave him for remaining silent. He figured he was pretty much almost dead anyways, so why not sacrifice for someone else who has a life to live? Who *deserves* to have a life to live?

One mission, the team was assigned to travel to a dying planet. They needed to quickly travel to the planet, in hopes to evacuate the remaining population. Lance was in the Blue Lion, Shiro and Keith were in the Red Lion, and Hunk and Pidge were in the Yellow Lion. As they were entering the orbit of the planet, they were barraged by a large amount of meteors that were kept within the planet’s orbit, and were attempting to dodge them as they tried to find a safe spot to land. As they were dodging the meteors, Lance noticed that a rather large meteor was on its way towards the Red Lion. In a split second decision, Lance sped up the Blue Lion and flew in front of the Red Lion, effectively taking the blow. He could hear his teammates in the comms, but was unable to reply, speech not working correctly after months of disuse. As he crashed onto the planet, he felt glad that he had actually made a difference. That he’d actually done something with his life. His Mama’d be proud.

Although he thought for sure that he was a goner, especially after the Blue Lion made contact with the planet’s flaming, rocky surface, his teammates managed to rescue him, promptly retreating from the planet, leaving its inhabitants for dead in favour of taking care of Lance.

Thankfully for them, he had no major injuries; just a few bruises and scratches. His Lion had taken the brunt of the blow, shielding him from any serious damage. Unfortunately, he had to deal with the fact that he had inadvertently caused the extinction of an entire race.

He attempted to screech “Why did you save me instead of them?!”, although all that came out were a few warbled sounds and wheezes.

“What was that, Lance?” Shiro said in a confused tone. “I can’t understand what you’re saying.” Lance just huffed, crossing his arms. He had momentarily forgotten the state that his voice was in, and his thoughts were now a mantra of ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid…’

“Lance, you need to answer me.”

Lance simply brought all of his fingers down on his right hand besides his index finger, middle finger, and thumb, and then brought them together in two swift motions. *NO* He had learned years ago how to sign a few simple words and phrases, after his deaf niece was born. That happened only a few weeks before he was launched into space, however, so he never really learned how to do much else besides the basics.

Shiro just had a confused look on his face.

“Look, I know you don’t want to talk. But you’re going to have to.”

He stood up making his way to Lance’s door, preparing to open it.

“Thank you for taking that blow, though. It was very kind of you. Just… Don’t do it again, okay?”

Lance looked away at that, and Shiro sighed, exiting the room. Lance couldn’t believe it. He had been PRAISED for something! For the first time in MONTHS! He quickly decided something: He needed to save people more often.

And so he did. Whenever he saw one of his fellow paladins in danger of taking a hit, he flew in front of them. At first, the team was confused, but also thankful. After a while, however, and Lance’s persistent refusal to use the Healing Pods (which had lead to a great many dangerous situations), they decided to have a talk with him.

Of course, the alarms started blaring in the middle of their meeting regarding that prospect, so they had to fly into battle.

The Galra advanced quickly, with far too many troops for the seven of them to handle. So, they had to wormhole away. Coran, however, was having a bit of trouble with the lenses again, so they needed to defend the castle as he replaced the ones that had fallen off. The usual plan happened; they split up, and fought a few Galran ships each. Lance, however, had once again noticed that someone was about to get hurt.

So he flew in front of them, of course. The Galran ship that Lance had blocked Shiro from a blow from looked as if it were the leader of them all, much bigger and fancier looking. It also happened to be way more powerful than all the others. Lance didn’t care, however. All that mattered was that Shiro got away safely. Just as Lance took the blow, Allura was able to wormhole away, several galaxies from where they were. They were safe, for now. At least, everyone but Lance.

Lance was currently in critical condition. As soon as the paladins could get him to the castle, they stripped him and put him into a cryo suit. Pidge almost cried at the sight. Every bone you could imagine jutted out from Lance’s body. He had dark bags under his eyes, almost as if he had smeared eyeliner under them. He had multiple deep, dark scratches all over from hours on the training deck, some still bleeding. His body looked as if it could collapse into itself at any moment. Hunk turned around and threw up. Allura covered her eyes and looked away, and Coran didn’t look much better, looking faint as he sat down and turned away.

“My boy, I’ve failed my boy…” he whispered, trembling as he thought about what he could’ve done wrong. He thought Lance had been getting better, he rarely talked about his problems anymore. The last time had been months ago, in fact…

Shiro looked absolutely heartbroken, but helped Keith put Lance into a Healing Pod regardless, although he didn’t really need the help. Lance couldn’t’ve weighed any more than 100 pounds; He looked like a skeleton. Felt like one, too.

Lance ended up staying in the Healing Pod for a week, and the team anxiously waited for him to come out, formulating a plan to help him once he finally came out. And, when the time finally came, they all hugged him tightly, sans Keith.

“Woah, woah, hey guys, whaddya doin all up’nd in my biz? A guy like me’s gotta have his space, you know. Don’t want all of your filthy germs on me.” He pushed them away gently, and shuddered at the thought, as he was quite the germaphobe. Actually, he was quite cold, too, which contributed to the shuddering…

He went wide-eyed at this revelation, glancing down and seeing the Cryo Suit on his body.

“Oh, wait- Fuck-” he stuttered, realising why they were hugging him. They had seen his body. All of the injuries, bones… *Everything*.

Keith stomped forward, red in the face. Red in the eyes, too. ‘Probably been crying, like the rest of them’, Lance noted.

“What the FUCK were you thinking, Lance? You can’t just take hits from a giant Galran ship like that! It’s fucking DANGEROUS. And what’s with all those injuries? What the fuck’s up with those? They were infected as all hell! And the *bones*!” Keith was seething at that point, Lance could practically feel the heat in the room rising from his red-hot anger. “You’re not supposed to be able to see fucking bones like that!” Shiro walked over to him, trying to grab onto his shoulders in an attempt to calm him. He leaned down and whispered something into Keith’s ear, and promptly dragged him out of the room.

“I hate to take Keith’s side on this, Lance,” Hunk began, sniffling a bit and wiping the corner of his mouth, “but he has a point. You were really unhealthy, and we’re a little concerned about yo-”

“Lance, you could’ve died!” Pidge shrieked, interrupting Hunk and his gentle explanation of their feelings towards Lance’s state of being. “You were severely malnourished, you had infected wounds, your vocal cords were *completely* fucked-”

Lance felt a hot tear run down his cheek. “Huh,” he whispered, reaching up to touch it. “Didn’t think I could do that anymore.”

Allura having turned back around to face him by then, noticing his tears, walked over and sat beside of him. She held out her arms, and Lance was quick to bury his face in her shoulder, letting all of his bottled up emotions out in the form of tears and random loud shrieks and groans.

“It’s alright, Lance… It’s alright.”

After half an hour or so, Lance’s tears finally stopped streaming., and he was able to formulate words.

“I’I’m so sorry, guys. I… Just wanted to be a better paladin!- I just wanted to be a better paladin…”

“You ain’t gonna get any better at being a paladin without taking care of yourself,” Keith said, throwing Lance’s jacket at him. After receiving a glare from Shiro, who had reentered the room with him, he sighed. “I’m sorry, Lance. For my outburst, that is.” He promptly walked out of the room, before he could have another outburst.

That was the most sincere tone Lance had ever heard Keith use, and he was going to savour it. Maybe use it as blackmai- wait, no. Everyone else was there to hear it, too.

Lance got out of Allura’s lap. He didn’t want to invade her personal space any more than he had to. “No, it’s… It’s alright. I was being stupid. I just thought… You know… I could be more useful if- If I- That I could be more useful if I trained more, and stopped wasting so many resources-”

“Wasting resources?” Shiro asked, seemingly the only decently calm one in the room. “You need food and medical supplies to survive, Lance.” He walked to Lance, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not a waste if it’s keeping you alive.”

“You wouldn’t use precious resources to keep a piece of trash alive, would you?” he questioned. “Because that’s what I am,” he sighed. “Trash. Useless. I have no use on this team. You could easily replace me-”

Hunk stomped his foot, becoming further frustrated with the situation after that comment. “We absolutely could NOT replace you, Lance! You’re my best friend! We grew up together! We’re practically BROTHERS at this point!” He looked down and to the right, seeming resigned. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

He turned away, leaving the room. Lance could just hear his friend’s stifled cries, and felt crushed. He’d done that to Hunk. He was terrible.

“Oh, god-” he said, voice sounding strained, about to begin crying again. “I made Hunk cry…”

“Lance, I’m… Sorry,” Coran said, still facing away from him. “I never meant for this to happen-”

“No, no!- It’s alright, Coran!” Lance said. If he’d made Coran cry, too he didn’t know what he’d do with himself. Launch himself into space without a suit, probably. Die the death he deserved for how he made the others feel.

“No, it’s not.” Coran turned around to face the boy that had become like a nephew to him. “I should’ve noticed that something was off. People don’t just stop talking, or showing up to meals. At least, not on Altea, they didn’t.”

“Can confirm,” Pidge chimed in. “That’s not a normal behaviour on Earth, either.”

“I should’ve done more when you first told me you were having these feelings.” Coran said, looking regretful as he stood up and began to walk over to Lance. “Instead of giving you terrible advice.”

Lance looked flabbergasted. “It was really good advice, though! I just needed to make myself usefu-” He was interrupted by a tight embrace from Coran.

“I don’t want to hear any more of that nonsense coming from you, understand? None of it is true. You were plenty useful. None of this has been your fault.”

“Coran’s right, Lance,” Shiro said gently. “You’re just as important as any of us.”

“Yeah!” Pidge said, joining in.

“They’re all right, you know,” Allura said. “You truly are an important member of this team, even when we’re not fighting the Galra. You give great advice, make terrible jokes that are probably the funniest things I have ever heard, and, on top of all of that… You’re a wonderful friend.”

Lance teared up, and Shiro extended his arm towards Lance. Lance took his hand, and stood up.

“You should really rest, Lance,” he said. “You’ve had a rough day.”

And so, after a few more tears were shed and hugs were exchanged, he headed back to room, crawled under the covers, and went to sleep, having the first peaceful night of rest he could remember in months.


End file.
